The Chamber Below the Dreadfort
by PhoenixFlame6
Summary: Sansa's new husband happily bids her to explore every room in the Dreadfort - except one. A retelling of Angela Carter's Bluebeard-inspired "The Bloody Chamber."
1. The Match

**The Chamber Below the Dreadfort**

******Chapter One:** The Match

**Disclaimer:** GRRM and HBO can haggle for ownership, I'm just playing in the sandbox.

**Author's Note:** Originally written for the ASOIAF Kink Meme. This is a retelling of Angela Carter's short story, "The Bloody Chamber," aka the feminist addition to the Bluebeard myth. I highly recommend it—if you search for "The Bloody Chamber pdf" in Google, it should pop up as a word document. That said, reading Carter's story is **not** required, it just adds extra references and twists.

In addition, this fic is based in the show's canon, with background supplied by the novels. The show's more _thespian_ take on Ramsay is as fascinating as it is creepy. Obviously an AU. Content warnings include some gore, references to torture, creepy sadists, a few choice swears, mildish sexual content, underage marriage, and kinda-sorta dubious consent.

* * *

Sansa Stark remembers that day how she trotted on her palfrey in a tremulous if cheerful state of excitement. Her heart pounded in time to the horse's hoof-falls as it bore her to the serrated battlements of the Dreadfort, and into the unexpected and unguessable life as the lady of Ramsay Bolton.

She is thinking of her mother, after they parted ways at Winterfell. Her mother remains there with a contingent of King Robb's men and a new household recruited from Torrhen's Square. Her brother wants his home again. Sansa rides with her new husband, his guards, and a few servants. In the midst of her excitement she also feels a pang of loss. She had just been reunited with her mother and brother when she was standing before a septon with a new cloak around her shoulders, Robb's bid to placate the North.

Sansa never thought a Lannister would save her from another Lannister, or that she would leave King's Landing without her brother battering down its gates. She never thought she could be married off to the former Bastard of Bolton. But these are strange times in Westeros.

* * *

The Kingslayer has returned to King's Landing. Sansa would not have recognized him if not for his voice, as she stands at the edges of the throne room. The coldly slaughterous lion she last saw is a half-starved beggar, his shoulders jutting out from rags and only a beard keeping his face from cadaverous. She looks closer, alarmed—his sword hand is gone. His companion is likewise a strange sight. She is the tallest woman Sansa has ever seen, taller than the Kingslayer, and she wears full armor like a Mormont woman. Sansa scours for a sigil, hardly paying attention to her soon-to-be good-brother, even though her marriage in two days makes her stomach writhe in dread.

Her nerves are flayed raw when the Kingslayer—Ser Jaime, she reminds herself—visits her chambers later that evening, the homely warrior woman in tow. He has bathed but his clothes sag and hang. Sansa remembers Jory; she never saw the body, but she knows the Kingslayer stabbed him through the eye.

The woman falls to one knee, distracting her from her dull rancor. Sansa flinches back at the clatter of her armor. This close, she notices her large blue eyes.

"Lady Sansa, I am here on behalf of your mother." Her elocution is highborn, puzzling Sansa more. "We have sworn an oath to secure the return of you and your sister."

Pain and treachery have made her wary. Stepping back, Sansa tries to decide if this is a trap. Does the infamous lion not serve his sister? The Kingslayer's mouth twitches as if he's trying to hold his tongue. She stares at her hands, fingers twining uselessly. The woman is...unusual, she decides. But she has a solemn, plain dignity in her voice that makes Sansa answer honestly, if still neutral with her words.

"My lady, Arya vanished when King Joffrey arrested my father. I fear she is dead. And my lord, I am to marry your brother the day after tomorrow."

He cannot hold it in—the knight starts laughing, his unsevered hand massaging his temples. To Sansa it sounds more aggrieved than amused.

"My lady Brienne, will disrupting my father's politics at last raise me above your contempt?" His voice is quieter than she remembers, scraped raw by too many days in pain.

Lady Brienne—of Tarth, Sansa thinks, the name niggling in her memory—looks up at him in surprise and rises. "You would do this, _Ser_ Jaime?"

His mouth is sour. He won't meet her eyes, but he looks down at Sansa. She sees the lion there, appraising and weighing. Weighing his own cost?Lady Brienne said he was fulfilling an oath, but her father always said Jaime Lannister had less honor than humility.

"Only if you leave tonight," he says at last. "I know most of the guards now. Perhaps not the ones tomorrow."

"But Lord Tyrion…" It is not out of any desire to stay, but an illogical thought he might suddenly remember his brother's engagement.

"It would not be the first time I've dashed his chance at romance." Jaime tries to sound indolent, but she hears his bitterness. His eyes narrow on hers, not angry, but as if he senses every false note in her heart. "Though I suspect not yours. Not the first time I have spoiled my father's politics either."

Sansa does not understand these conflictions, and with her feelings close to choking her, she does not dwell. She merely listens, as the Kingslayer and the daughter of Tarth argue out a plan. In the end, they set out that night. Ser Jaime accompanies them to the city gates, menacing them past a few over-inquisitive guards. Sansa knows not what he risks, but she bids him good luck. Brienne looks morose, until she turns in her saddle to offer Sansa a small smile. They have gold and supplies, but also a long way to go before they reach her brother's camp.

* * *

Sansa knows escaping the Lannisters does not free her from marriage obligations, but neither did she expect talk to turn so soon. It began the day Roose Bolton arrived on a crow-black courser, his fur cloak hanging off the horse's flanks like heavy wings. He looked at her before addressing his king, his gaze canny and cool as a lynx. She remembers Lord Bolton from a lifetime ago, when she offered condolences for his son, Domeric. He had accepted them with cold grace and void eyes.

She shares a tent with her mother, close to Robb and his new wife's quarters. King's Landing gave Sansa a shameless habit for eavesdropping—it was the only way she could learn something not couched and tailored for her ears. She lies on her camp bed, playing with wall shadows as she listens.

_"I propose my son, Ramsay."_ Though their voices are muffled by the tent walls, she hears Roose's dagger-precise inflections.

_"Your bastard?"_ Catelyn's voice is shocked and cold._ "You cannot think—"_

_"He is a Bolton now, heir to all that I own. Legitimized when he returned from Winterfell."_

_"After he let Theon Greyjoy escape?"_

Sansa knows of her foster-brother's treachery, and his likely murder of her sweet brothers.

Bolton pauses. _"When he secured Winterfell after your kraken-ward's carnage. He commands the Dreadfort admirably in my absence. Your Grace, would you fault your natural brother for his birth? Ramsay is a skilled commander and huntsman, cleverer and franker than most."_

_"Is he not the widower of Lady Hornwood?"_ Catelyn ignores that he purposely addresses Robb.

Sansa smiles; her mother is Lady Stark, answerable to no man but her king.

She thinks Lord Bolton wants to snap at her mother, but his voice merely holds more steel. _"He was her gracious husband. She disappeared well after he returned to the Dreadfort, as she wished to stay in her own lands. A tragedy, but one my son could not have prevented."_ He sighs—it sounds intended to Sansa, whose ears have grown sensitive to court-speak. _"Your Grace, you must see the contention around you, especially after the Karstarks. A Northern match will reassure your people. Your sons will rule Winterfell, your nephews will rule the Dreadfort. This is not a poor proposition."_

A legitimized bastard? _No, Robb would never agree to that._ She tucks her knees to her chest, remembering with queasiness her last bastard betrothed.

Robb answers after a long pause and Sansa squirms._ "I will consider it, but I give you no more than that."_

She has fallen into a restless sleep by the time her mother comes to bed, but the young king discusses it the next morning as they break their fast. Sansa remains a maid, if only by a day and because of a strange Lannister. Her marriage will help her family. Speaking to her as a king, Robb keeps his voice impassive.

"Sister, I will not force you into this. But consider meeting him. Ramsay can catch up to our host. Whatever your answer, I will respect it."

Her mother's eyes are wary, her pride offended. But perhaps she merely thinks of Jon. Sansa nods without hesitation, even though her stomach is uneasy. She will never forget the day she railed against her father, when he planned to break her engagement to Joffrey. If she had just listened to anyone not wearing red and gold.

"If it helps the North, I shall."

As Sansa learns, they were en route to her uncle's wedding at the Twins, at least until Lord Bolton brought word from the Freys. They have postponed the nuptials due to Lord Walder's poor health. Robb can do little but fortify his camp by Oldstones and prepare to make for Riverrun. Bolton's bastard—_Ramsay_, she tells herself—will arrive any day now.

That day comes buried in clouds and pattered by rain.

Sansa misses Shae. The woman could be coarse and cagey, but her advice was sound. Unmaidenly so. _What if she is hurt, for my escape?_ Surely the Kingslayer will take the fault.

A camp is hardly a place for meeting a suitor, but her brother wants it decided. From prodding her mother, who remains in wary opposition of the match, Sansa knows if she accepts they will marry here, and then Sansa will go with her husband to the Dreadfort while Lady Catelyn takes men to Winterfell to rebuild. They meet today; her family and the Boltons wait in Robb's pavilion. Roose had informed her mother that Ramsay raced ahead of his men to get there early, but Catelyn only asked what virtue there was in riding a frothing horse.

After Sansa has finished arranging her hair into a Northern style, she tells herself bastard does not mean boorish. Jon was always as kind as Robb.

But Joffrey is also a bastard. The thought makes her chest go cold, chillier than the damp morning as she walks the short distance to Robb's tent. Joffrey did not look savage. She found him beautiful once, but that was long ago. Her father always spoke of Lord Bolton as a sensible man. But also cold. Calculating. A stone throw from treacherous, says her mother. Sansa enters the royal pavilion, its flaps spread wide. What if he—

"Good morning, my lady."

Sansa breaks off her unraveling thoughts at the unfamiliar voice. Her brother stands at a large table, Catelyn and Roose beside him. Between her and her family is Ramsay Sn—_Bolton_. She looks at her suitor as she would a King's Landing courtier, her face passive, but her mind racing to put together an impression. Without thinking she returns his greeting.

She feared Lord Bolton's son would be a brute, but he is just a young man, with a strong jaw and a compact build. Not so much taller than she, dark-haired like his father. He wears a dark cloak with fox fur at the shoulders. Sansa does not think he grew up in the Dreadfort. A life of little denial pins itself to the bones as a permanent quality. Some claim this stamp is noble heritage, but her half-brother Jon has the same cast. This polish merely comes from less hardship.

Sansa thinks him striking more than beautiful. Except his eyes. They would be large and expressive even on a girl. And the color—not a stormy blue like her Tully kin, but icy and pale, ringed in darker cobalt. He lacks the affixed smile of most courtiers addressing a lady, but he studies her with quiet mirth.

Somewhere, amidst her thoughts, she hears his father's introduction. Her mother watches like an eagle; her brother watches with trepidation. Then she realizes they are looking at her, faces querying, as if—

_As if wondering how much King's Landing has damaged you._ Her near-marriage to the Imp caused her mother to blanch…Sansa does not want to tell her that was hardly the worst of it. Lady Brienne has heard her stories though. The patient lady-knight is kind without being soft, and told Sansa she was braver than she ever expected.

But then Sansa made a fool of herself her first night in camp, when she stumbled into a knight. When she is surrounded by walls, the clatter-clank of armor sets her nerves and teeth on edge. At the Red Keep, the sound meant blood and bruises. As she stumbled, Robb's bannerman clapped a mailed hand on her shoulder. Her shriek set the pavilion to silence and her mother to horror. Gods, a little fool. She hates their pitying, overly gentle looks, like she's lost all her Northern heart.

And so Sansa arms herself with her courtesy, smiles graciously, and welcomes Lord Bolton's heir.

* * *

"Are you sure you wish this match?" Her mother looks strained.

"I wish to help our family."

Catelyn tries to smile, fails, and sighs. Sansa takes her hand. Her mother has missed her. Sansa feels a wonderful fool for thinking it was only she who steeped in loneliness. When she turned twelve her mother began taking her into her confidence, and it remains the sincerest moment Sansa ever felt like a woman.

"My defiant, foolish son almost lost the war for love. I am loath to make you pay for his mistake."

"Robb did not make me."

Her mother sighs again. At last she takes out an early gift to her daughter—a deep-brown, sable-lined cloak, better suited for the North than the torn thing she arrived in. It will match her new gloves. Catelyn talks about sundry happenings, pausing when she realizes Sansa is lost in her own thoughts, her hands buried in the soft cloak.

Sansa cannot help thinking of yesterday. Her mother is not the first person since her return to offer a gift.

* * *

They finally have a moment alone. The North is not so strict as the south regarding chaperones—a man is expected to have honor, not be forced into it, a seemingly strange concept for southern Houses. Her mother made an exception for Ramsay, finding odd things to fill her time while Sansa attempted to speak with him. She kept Lady Brienne close too.

Because of her suitor, Sansa cannot tell her mother why wants to be alone—Joffrey was his best-mannered when their parents were near. She will not fall for those mummeries again.

Then at last the rain stopped. She has watched his eyes slide sideways, narrowing, knowing full well why Lady Catelyn remains. Sansa admits he has reason to feel mildly offended. Her half-brother had the same. In an effort to please her mother, she knows she was cold to Jon. Someday, Sansa will visit him and pay the kindness he deserved when they were young.

She is the one who suggests they take a walk near the sepulcher of King Tristifer, and Ramsay shoots her a surly, eager look like a tiger in a cage. They leave with her on his arm. Her mother scowls, but Sansa smiles back at her, hoping she understands. She will not choose lightly.

The air is cool and damp; Sansa breathes deep, knowing the tender ladies of King's Landing would think it miserable. She is glad to be rid of the sticky, salty heat of the capital. They reach the weathered sepulcher of Oldstones, a ways from the noisy camp. Sansa almost sputters when Ramsay vaults onto the chest-high tomb, careless of the king beneath. He holds out an expectant hand. Picturing her old septa's aghast face, she accepts after a moment, and he lifts her up. While she straightens her dress, he takes out something wrapped in black velvet.

"A gift, Lady Sansa. Winter is coming." Her House's words are spoken with jest, but she misses hearing them regardless.

Smiling, pleased if perplexed, she gently unwraps it. _Gloves?_ A pair of leather gloves, lined with rabbit fur. The craftsmanship is simple but the cinnamon-dyed leather feels softer than kidskin.

"They are beautiful, my lord." She will ask her mother what animal it comes from.

Ramsay smiles, his incisors uncommonly sharp. Deftly, he takes the gloves and slides them onto her hands. They are warm and soft, fitting her like a second skin. Too soft for a hunter or soldier, but not a lady.

He squeezes her fingertips and finds the leather snug. "Good, they fit. You have long fingers."

Sansa finds his eyes fascinating—grave and mirthful, appraising and chaffing. "All the better to play the harp with," she teases, starting to blush.

Perhaps bastard children do not grow up with the same tales of wolves and woods. Instead of answering, he kisses her, mouth warm over hers. Pulling away, not apologetic in the slightest, he raps on King Tristifer's ancient face.

"Isn't this the Mud King?"

When she tells of King Tristifer Mudd, he looks amused. He is quiet—not reserved, she thinks, but with no desire to carry on like a lordling at the Red Keep. Lord Bolton is clever and calculating though. Perhaps he told his son not to act like the allies of her jailors. Or perhaps Ramsay is just different, raised in a different world. She finds frankness more desirable since leaving the North.


	2. The Marriage

**The Chamber Below the Dreadfort**

**Chapter Two:** The Marriage

* * *

Above the hoofbeats and steady breathing of the horses, her husband rides in silence, eyes far-off but not unaware. Sansa remembers his stolen kiss, with tongue and teeth, sharp and tender. It hinted to her the future she so dreaded in her last engagement. Now, she finds her nervous excitement returning. They were joined before a septon—Sansa grew up with her mother's gods as much as her father's, and Ramsay does not seem like a person who cares.

She remains a maiden—her mother and brother would not consider a bedding in a warcamp. It came not at their brief stop in Winterfell, for her heart was sick with memories and she slept near her mother. Her future lay at the Dreadfort, the Bolton's fierce hold, towering above the Weeping Water. The place where she will bear her children.

Though she stays carnally innocent, her mind slinked from girlhood the night of her wedding. Her brother gave her a boisterous wedding feast, drenched in wine and music. If the Lannisters had been planning an attack, they would have thought Robb's host was twice its size.

Sansa and her new husband shared a cup of wine, as custom. She knows she drank more than he did, though he refilled it every time she neared the dregs. Ah, it made for a warm evening. Whatever the odd circumstances and her unusual match, she had the gift of seeing Robb dance with his lithe Volantene queen, and her mother smiling in spite of her worries.

Her necklace hung heavy on her throat. A family heirloom, explained her new father-in-law after Ramsay clasped it around her neck. The silver loop was short, almost a choker, and covered by a ring of dark rubies. One of her brother's bannermen, deep in his cups, slurred that she was the most beautiful bride to have her throat cut on her wedding night. Lord Bolton's frigid stare made him quickly return to his wine.

Later in the feast, she remembers Ramsay's solid form more than his voice. He spoke relatively little, though a small smile never left. She leaned against him more than she meant, laughing at some jest she cannot remember. At some point he tucked his arm low around her waist and kept her close, his fingers sometimes winding in the chestnut hair that fell free down her back. Sansa remembers wanting to giggle—in her wine-soaked state, she knew it was because they sat across from her mother. Now, she wearies of their mutual dislike.

From time to time he would look at her, silent only in voice. His eyes were alive, narrowed in lust, though she does not know if it was lust for his bride or just her flesh and title. At the time she did not care and smiled back, emboldened by drink and the carmine jewels encircling her throat. She was no one's meat, but the heir of Winterfell, though likely not for long.

She watches Lord Ramsay out of the corner of her eye. He smells of leather and the forest. Not unpleasant, but she notices it after her long stay in King's Landing. It is how she knows when he tries to surprise her. He moves as softly as snowfall, but she can always smell the leather. And too, she has developed a good sense eyes at her back. It seems to amuse him though, so she pretends to be pleasantly startled.

First they arrived in Winterfell, Robb having already sent a few workers so it would at least be habitable. Lady Catelyn will oversee the rebuilding. The Young Wolf wants her away from the war, as much as he feels comforted by her presence. Sansa held in her tears when they rode through the gates. Though she knows Theon burned anything that could hold a flame, the charred sight still sends a shudder through her, and her reins bite into her soft gloves.

Ramsay steers his horse closer, a hulking red stallion that pins his ears at everything. A clanking, monstrous bit keeps him civil near Sansa's palfrey. As he takes in the burned stead with his impassively expressive gaze, she realizes he has never seen the seat of the North without char and ash.

"I wish you could see Winterfell as it was, not this…" The word comes strained off her lips. "Burned shell."

He looks over and offers a smile. "We will be back. I'm sure your mother can make it respectable soon."

Sansa thinks he sounds like a commoner but speaks with schooling, mimicking his father or otherwise. Sometimes it drops, his words knocking together, like someone she would hear in a marketplace or her brother's army. She still prefers his insouciance to deceptive niceties.

And she supposes she is still girlish enough to appreciate a mystery. For every word Ramsay speaks, his eyes say a dozen more. Yet his face is hard to read, a pale mask where two odd eyes stare out. He is older than her, but she cannot tell by how much. Or whether he tolerates or genuinely likes her. And sometimes, with his sharp and hungry looks, he unsettles her.

His terseness fades when they approach the Dreadfort. The stallion mouths his bit, reins loose at his neck. Her husband smiles and she sees pride in his eyes.

"When did you first come here?"

He looks over, sharp as a saber, but finally shrugs and softens. "As a child. My father knew I was his. I came here for good three years ago."

_Ah. _She knows that is close to when Domeric died. As her brother thought, Lord Bolton took in his bastard when he had no other heir._ What will happen when his Frey wife gives him sons?_ Bolton swore to Robb that Ramsay will remain his heir, but if he dies, will his highborn bannermen feel the same? She should have thought of this before she agreed, before she…_oh, that is why he wanted you_. A king's sister to strengthen his claim.

"Is that the Weeping Water?" she asks, noting his appraising gaze. She hears the murmur of the currents.

He tells her small pieces about his home. Half-accurate history, its prized kennels, the command it holds over the eastern North. He even mentions his mother, who he says entranced Lord Bolton with a song. Sansa cannot imagine his father entranced by anything, but she keeps her thoughts to herself.

The Dreadfort earns its name. The battlements are sharp and serrated; the stone is dark. Hounds bark from a kennel. She shivers when they pass under the gate, cold in its shadow. It is only late morning, the grass still wet with dew. He lifts her from the saddle once they reach the courtyard and introduces her to the old steward standing nearby. The door grinds closed behind her and she blinks through the dim. The Dreadfort has windows and torches, but weeks on the road have accustomed her to sunlight.

Sansa does not know what to expect or what is expected her. When he leads her up flights of stone stairs, to one of the highest floors, and ushers her into a bedchamber, she realizes he plans to have her, on a grand bed made of ebony and vermillion lacquer. Her shiver and twisting belly comes unbidden. Until the morning after Blackwater, she looked at her wedding night as something only survivable because she was expected to bear children. And yet she remembers her wedding feast, belly burning with wine, thinking how _silly_ her brother was for delaying her consummation.

Her eyes are already closed when her husband kisses her, tasting her fear. But is a brief kiss before he pushes away, hands on her shoulders.

"I have the Dreadfort to see to. Wander wherever, except the kennels." He smirks, rakish. "My bitches are jealous."

"But…"

He chuckles and his grip tightens, making her squirm on the edge of discomfort. "_Soon_. Did I wed a harlot?"

She flushes. Some doubt she returned from King's Landing a maid. Rumors whispered instead of voiced, for fear of Robb's fury or her great uncle's fists. He leaves her standing there, wishing he stayed, confused as to what she should even do.

Sansa feels adrift in this new place, as different from Winterfell as her birthplace is from King's Landing. Winterfell never made her feel the weight of all the stone above her head. Servants soon arrive with things to unpack. Sansa has no idea if this is their chamber or his.

How does one wile away the time before a bedding? He bade her to explore and thus with nothing else to do, she leaves the room and to acquaint herself with the overbearing place.

The Dreadfort has many stairs and many halls. She supposes the Boltons have memorized the cracks in the walls, the faded tapestries. Sansa has not, and soon has no idea where she is. The closest room is behind double doors of mahogany. Peeking inside, she enters in curiosity.

_A meeting chamber? A trophy room?_ In the center is a wooden table twice her length, flanked by chairs too comfortable for dining. Both are carved from bloodwood, chosen no doubt as tribute to the weaponry that lines the room. Several bookcases are tucked in a corner, their bindings all leather—the room simmers with the musky scent. The pride of the room is steel. Racks and display cases span the walls. The glass is exquisite, almost without flaw. Nothing better would do for the blades that fill the room.

There are swords, both tools of war and decorated prizes, broadswords and even an arakh. But mostly there are knives. A dirk as long as her forearm, its hilt pocked with jade; a small ebony rack with the daintiest blades she has ever seen, no longer than her pinky, delicate and sharp as a cat's fang.

Old Nan's stories cozen back to her, of ancient Boltons and their ghastly predilection for skinning. _Our knives are sharp_, their words say. _A naked man has few secrets, a flayed man none_, so some whisper as their true saying. And yet, she is transfixed with how _pretty_ they are. Not the grisly things one might imagine, but immaculate and veneered. A lucent world of metal and stones.

Sansa thinks she can hear the whispers of the Weeping Water, its secrets trapped beneath the icy currents. At the far end of the chamber is a glass display case mounted on the wall, holding two swords and a long, slender dagger. Caught in the light, the case shows her reflection more than the blades.

Below the case, and more intriguing, sits a pedestal with three knives, none longer than her hand. The prettiest has blade so slender it looks almost like jewelry. A red-filled design is etched into the steel. The small hilt has an oxblood strip of leather.

Her neck prickles a warning and she snaps up.

"Arming yourself, my lady?" Her breath hisses past her teeth. He stands behind her with a cool smile and glittering eyes, someplace between mocking and amused. "Of course the only time I startle you is when you have a mirror."

She blushes and turns to him. So he realized she could usually sense him coming. "Exploring, my lord. The door was not locked."

He cocks an eyebrow. "If it was locked you would not be in here." Ramsay walks up beside her, eyes only for the blades. "My family's greatest treasure should not be locked away."

"Are they ceremonial?" As if she would touch one to find out.

"Blades are for killing, not_ play-acting_," he scoffs.

"These are beautiful."

Ramsay smiles, genuine she thinks, not just at his own amusement. He plucks the red-etched knife from the stand.

"You throw this one. You can core an eye if your aim is good enough." He balances it on his fingers, flipping it into his palm. "Few smiths forge anything this well-weighted. Kill someone with it, and their widow should thank you for the gift."

He takes the second blade, longer than its companion, with a wider blade and heavier hilt. A red, black-flecked stone shines in the crosspiece. "This is one for hunting."

"Throwing it?"

His laughter barks overloud through the chamber. "Skinning." His eyes look to hers, glimmering, not only with mirth but ardor. "It's an art. How could you have a fox-trimmed cloak without someone cutting its skin off?"

Sansa looks at the pristine blade. He holds it almost lovingly, a tender-hearted huntsman. "You enjoy hunting, my lord."

"It's better than hitting knights with a stick," he says, daring her to say different.

Sansa offers him a pretty smile. "I used to accompany my brothers on hunts. Rabbits and deer and such." Those were happier times.

"When a dead rabbit means you eat that night, it loses excitement. I hunt better game." He replaces the flaying knife, grin quirking.

During the ride from the Riverlands he took down a hart from almost three-hundred yards. Bears, elk, _wolves_—she can see him with his bow, bringing them down with the eagle-eyed sharpness she sees glitter on occasion. Ramsay looks at most people like they are game.

"I could accompany you, my lord, if it pleases you." She has little desire after Lady's death, but that would make for a dull reply.

He snorts and touches her cheek. "You can, someday. Hunting is always better with a pretty lady."

It is those moments that make her step away—sometimes, the hunter in his gaze is too prowling and canny. A cat may find a broken-winged bird amusing, but its own laughter does not make it so. His eyes lurk now, and his hand slips to her throat, thumb tracing her jaw. She shivers, not from fear. Mostly not. "You are very pretty, Sansa, even if you lie about enjoying hunting." He sounds amused, not accusing. "It's artistry. You cut things to make something better. Are your gloves not fine?"

Sansa has heard that a snake can transfix you with its eyes. She thinks of something Margaery said, soon before she fled with Lady Brienne. The Tyrell Rose was in good spirits, reclining on a divan, wine and sun making her as close to silly as she ever could be. She laughed, teasing but also not, and told Sansa something she heard from a bard in Highgarden. Sansa always remembered; she would not blurt it to a man, particularly hers, but his voracious stare makes her voice tumble free. She feels warm, like she just drank a cup of wine.

"There is a striking resemblance between the act of love and the ministrations of a torturer, my lord."

Lord Ramsay watches her in dead silence, expression blank as the grave. His eyes that say everything often say nothing. Then in a hot rush his mouth clacks against hers, and when he pulls back his grin is feral, voice thick and eyes alight.

"From you, that's _precious_."

He resumes his attack, pushing her against the heavy table, her hands steadying herself against the edge, his own tugging at her stays. Though she fights for breath in between kisses and it seems so very wicked, he is not harming her. Her own thoughts were not so vivid, but perhaps a whisper in her mind, a dredged detail from some crooked story of Margaery or Jeyne's. Something prods her belly—Sansa wonders for a moment, before her girlhood with five brothers answers for her. He jerks harder at her stays, smirking when her breasts pull free. _No, surely for a consummation…?_

"Should we go…?" _Should we wait for night? Do newlyweds even do this during the day?_

"_No_," he growls.

He pushes her the rest of the way onto the table, sliding between her legs, hands disappearing under her skirts. Sansa catches her reflection in the glass case, another girl looking back at her, eyes wide. Then pain spears through her and she yelps—just as those sharp teeth bury themselves in her neck. _Not buried_, she realizes after a moment of alarm, but digging, daring her to cry out. Her reflection stares back as he drives into her. She is wrapped around him, as wanton a maid as there ever was, feeling one of his hands braced on the table beside her, the other one clamped on her shoulder. She can barely see him from their closeness, only hear his rutting breath and feel a fierce smile as his teeth scrape her throat. _A striking resemblance between the act of love and impalement._

At last he gasps out, and something warm and wet rolls down her thighs. Ramsay pushes her to her back and further onto the table so she lies atop it, detangling himself enough to sprawl beside her. The sudden cold air of the Dreadfort stings; she is spent, cored. Her mind races too much to think clearly, but she thinks the pain was not as awful as she feared. Not as strong as the_ surprise_.

Propping himself on an elbow, he absently twines her hair into a long cord, until some berated desire to be a lord instead of a bastard son moves him to kiss her tenderly, the softest kiss since their wedding. Her softhearted husband, whose most beautiful room is dedicated to bloodshed.

"I was rash, my dear." He rubs her neck with his thumb, her skin still wet and sensitive. "But you standing here, looking so rapt at all my blades, saying pretty things—how does anyone resist you?"

Before she can reply, the doors swing open. Ramsay twists and hurls the red-etched dagger. The intruder squawks and Sansa winces as she hears steel bury in the doorframe. Then she realizes he must have been holding it beside her hip. She never heard him set it down.

"_What?_" he snaps. "I'll aim for your throat next time."

Sansa remains on her back, arms still trembling from extertion now crossed over her chest, caught between horror and embarrassment. She arches her neck to see him upside-down. A middle-aged guard, she thinks, his gaze averted. Not that she fears judgement, but to be found on atable—

"My lord, the brigands were seen a league away. You wished to know."

The anger melts off her husband's face, replaced by the thrill of one who feels most alive amid baying hounds and fleeing creatures. "Gather the boys and the bitches and wait for me."

When he is gone, Ramsay springs off the table and laces his breeches. He shoots her a sharp-toothed smile.

"I need bow practice, and idiots plague my lord father's lands."

Sansa sits up, disheveled beyond easy repair. "But you just returned—"

"You're a _girl _so you don't understand. They disrespect my father, and so they die." He smiles like he just found a cache of Valyrian steel. "I'll call you a bath and see you before I leave. You and the Dreadfort can get better acquainted." So she is just as easy to use as to put aside? She once imagined her wedding night trickling dreamily through the next day, a tender start to a sound marriage. He scoops her off the table, eyes half-closed, somewhere between languid and excited. "If you're lonely already, show me when I return."

Good to his word, his servants have a steaming tub waiting when she returns to the bedchamber, and a waifish servant to scrub her back and wash her hair. The water stings and her neck aches, but it is not truly unpleasant. Sansa stretches out in the tub, breath wafting steam. Giggling in spite of herself, she doubts her mother will want to hear this story. Lady Catelyn already thinks her husband is a lowborn beast.

Instead, Sansa thinks of witty Margaery, who _would_ savor a rakish tale. They used to talk during Margaery's frequent baths, Sansa on a divan and she in her tub, a pitcher of cold honeyed tea nearby. The Rose of Tyrell explained she grew up with dozens of close cousins, and so a bath without someone to trade gossip is a waste. She had a way of turning to regard any who entered her chamber, her face wreathed in steam, eyes beguiling.

Margaery would like her story. Now that her body has relaxed in the hot water, her skin scrubbed clean, she finds herself less alarmed. Did fine ladies fling their passions onto tables? She thinks of his soft kiss. _A welcome to a world more debauched than you expected?_ Sansa remembers his avaricious smile from their wedding feast. Perhaps it is better to be valued as an object of passion than to never be valued at all.

Sansa knows he has entered when the maid skitters off. She turns to look over a bare shoulder, but he has slipped just out of sight. Before she can look the other way, his corded arms hook under hers and haul her from the bath. She squeals at the cold, horrified at the water splashing everywhere.

"A lord keeps his promises to his deflowered wife." He laughs into her damp hair and drapes her in a towel.

Something clinks at his hip and she turns in curiosity. Ramsay wears his hunting clothes of leather, fur, and weapons. The clinking comes from a ring of keys.

"The Deadfort is your home now. You should learn its secrets." He unhooks the ring. It holds every key she can think of—thick black ones, tiny copper ones, elegant keys to a chest and crude keys to a cellar. "Play with my knives, lounge in the jewels of my father's old wife, whatever suits. Except for one thing—"

He smiles, cagey, and separates a key from the rest. It is sharp and thin, almost a blade the size of her pinky. Ramsay tilts her chin up, eyes lively though his voice is solemn. "This key's door is on the first floor, at the end of the west-most hallway._ Do not use it._"

"What—" He taps her lips with a finger.

"A small room of no import but to myself." He bares his teeth in a smile, his hand reaching to cup a half-covered breast. He squeezes, not enough to hurt, but she still squirms.

Bolder—perhaps the steam has loosened her mind—she reaches for his own chest. "A key to your heart?" she asks, playful.

He looks back just as coy. "There is none. A key to my hell though."

Sansa smiles. She thinks she is learning his strange humor. "Then I promise."

He clips her chin gently and holds out the key ring. "It was a gift from my father, for when I want to be alone. A room down a dark stairwell full of cobwebs that would ruin your hair. Old and dark and boring, but a wolf defends its den." She accepts the ring with a solemnity that makes him chuckle. "So elegant, even dripping wet."

A blush returns, but a dawning thought too. Perhaps she is strange to him, with her court-trained ways. Do lowborn bastards fling their passions onto tables? He is just as strange to her. Sansa decides to use the time he is away to explore the Dreadfort and understand him better.

The men set off soon after she dresses. Ramsay rides his towering stallion. Her husband wears armor now, light enough to easily use his bow. It swings from his back, his falchion from his hip. For a man who loves knives, he wields an ugly sword.

First Sansa sends pleasant letters to Robb and her mother. The Dreadfort's maester has gone with Lord Bolton, but his steward tends the ravens. Beyond that she knows not what to do.

The Dreadfort's silence has returned, even more hollow than before. Compared to King's Landing, the place is a tomb. She is a lady, bound to an abandoned castle forgotten by the rest of the world. Roose Bolton has a new Frey wife, does he not? She wonders why he has not sent her here. He does not seem like a man who has much passion for his wife's bed. _And you do not seem a lady who almost enjoys being tossed onto a table and speared by her husband._


	3. The Game

**The Chamber Below the Dreadfort**

**Chapter Three:** The Game

* * *

The next day, Sansa scours the Dreadfort as if she has lost the kingdom's most valuable earring. The servants ignore her beyond her needs; she supposes some households desire quiet workers. By late afternoon she has explored the stables and training yard, peeked into the kitchens, flitted through a dozen rooms, and watched the sun through her bedchamber's large window. The window offers a view of the road for miles. The Weeping Water continues its sad murmur, but she does not wish to discover its secrets.

By happenstance, or perhaps not, her travels bring her to a door near in the west-most corridor, the key to which she has sworn never to use. Sansa studies the sharp little thing. She has also sworn to herself she will learn more about her husband, as a good wife should.

Strangely, her mind goes to Ser Jaime, who accompanied them to the city gates. He and Lady Brienne could almost be enemies for all they spar, but Sansa could see the warmth behind it. When Brienne asked what his father might do, the Kingslayer gave a cavalier shrug._ "To keep one vow you must break another. Though, I cannot recall ever going to one knee before my father and swearing not to return Lady Sansa."_ With nothing else to do on the path to Robb's camp, Brienne told her Jaime's side of the Sack of Kings Landing, a story Sansa's father never knew, or perhaps never believed.

She will keep her vow to herself. Guiltily so, as her curiosity and boredom drive her decision. But Ramsay will never know. Mind settled, she unlocks the forbidden door and slips inside.

Indeed, it is dark, and there is a staircase, but she sees no cobwebs and feels no fear. A brazier burns low at the bottom of the stairs, throwing enough light and shadow that she does not trip. Each step grows colder, her gown trailing the stone behind her, but Sansa's dark excitement only grows. If she finds his true face, all the better.

A railing is barely visible in the darkness. After she descends the final steps, Sansa's hand trails absently along the wood—

She jerks her hand back, stifling a cry. Her skin touched something cold and wet. She cannot see what it is; the wood is blackened and shadowed.

At the end of the short corridor is another door, unlocked. The next room gives her pause. A window allows a small shaft of light, turned amber by the sunset. Display cases dot the walls. The light is not perfect, but Sansa looks eagerly, expecting some interesting antiquity. What she finds is…_leather?_

The first glass case has a folded piece of ruddy-brown hide. The light is too dim to see a placard. The second case makes her stop. Inside is another piece of leather, but also something black. No, something burned into the hide. Sansa squints. And flinches. The brand is the direwolf of her family's sigil.

Sansa has never forgotten her stories, even if there are some she would rather forget. Perhaps the leather is some heirloom, commemorating a peace between their houses. The branded hide looks ancient, and the Starks and Boltons have a bloody past. But Old Nan's reedy voice returns unbidden, unwanted.

_"They say the Dreadfort has a special room, where the Boltons hang the skins of Stark kings. Whole swaths, cut away on a battlefield. None flays so keen as a Bolton, nor has the stomach for it. Others say this is a myth, started by House Bolton to scare their enemies, but I am only a superstitious old woman."_

All stories are true in the dark. She hears her own breath and for the first time realizes the Weeping Water is silent. Or the room somehow muffles all outside sound. She smells something old and molding. The hide refusing to let anyone forget it belonged to a king? Sansa almost laughs at her overexcited conclusions. _Don't be childish, history is oft written in blood._ If it is true, then the Boltons who drew Stark blood are long dead. Families keep hold of strange things.

A glow soon distracts her. There is a latticework door at the end of the room, light blooming behind it. His secret den? For a preposterous moment she wonders if he is waiting there, testing her loyalty. But those are silly girl thoughts, and she is a woman grown and deflowered.

The door opens with a creak. The light is murky, the window on the wrong side of the sunset. It resembles candlelight, painting the room in swaths of shadow and blood, aided by several low-burning sconces. It makes the large cross in the chamber's center look caked in gore. She stares, mind working to put together its meaning. Margaery winks in her memory—_"There is a striking resemblance between the act of love and the ministrations of a torturer. Do not dismiss all pain as bereft of pleasure, sweetling."_ How the girl think of such things?—but Sansa quells her unwinding thoughts.

Around her are other odd instruments. Closest, on a nearby table, is a leather sheath holding half a dozen small blades. These are the bastards from the armory above, ugly, dim things that still look like they can slice to the bone. Beside the sheath is an old horn. She stands in Roose Bolton's dungeon. His interrogation room.

So this is why Ramsay said not to come here. He does not want her stumbling across a torture chamber, though she has likely seen worse in the throne room of King's Landing. This answer nips at her until she realizes the smell has gotten stronger. The chamber darkens the further back it goes, but she sees something behind the cross. Sansa is uneasy, but it takes more than a dungeon to scare her.

Behind the cross rests a…a catafalque of some kind, covered in a mottled sheet. Sana knows something lies under it, just as she recognizes the mottled spots. Fear, too long hypnotized and languorous, sinks its fangs to the bone. She licks her lips, mouth dry as Dorne. Lord Bolton has not been at the Dreadfort in months; this cannot be his work. Something in the chamber still has her transfixed. A cracking, crumbling hope she is wrong.

She creeps up to the catafalque, half-expecting it to move. It takes a yank to remove the sheet—it sticks from congealed blood. When she looks down, she wishes her heart were made of stone.

Two women lie there, naked apart from…no, they are naked, but both have flesh peeled off their backs, leaving festering red wounds. Her stomach churns, prodded by the rotting smell. Their faces and necks are green and blue. Just behind them, on a narrow shelf, are several skulls. Remembering her mother's words, she wants to cry. She_ knows_ one is sweet Lady Hornwood.

"_Sansa?_"

She screams and clamps a hand over mouth until her lips hurt. But it is not Ramsay's whisper. The voice is dry and dead. Peering through the gloom, Sansa sees bars, and a shadow behind them.

"What are you—_where is he?_"

"Theon?"

She flings herself at the iron bars. A cage or a cell? She can barely make out his shape, she barely recognizes his corpse-thin voice. The light glints over a red-rimmed blue eye, a hollow cheek. Sansa knows this man, who escaped Winterfell under the Bastard's nose.

Fear, desperation, and shattered hope make an odd coupling. Her hands jangle through the key ring; Theon rasps something she does not hear. Every key, her husband said. She chooses the one closest to the forbidden key and rams it into the lock. It works, the shadows recede, and nothing keeps her from him.

"You murderer!" Sansa strikes him, clips his cheek, she who has never hit anyone besides Arya. "You killed my brothers!" She's choking, sobbing without tears. He crouches or kneels or something that puts his height below hers. When she shoves him he sprawls.

"_Didn't_—" he croaks from the floor. Sansa has lost her balance and scrabbles at the wall to stay upright, or else her shoes would have found his ribs, before he chokes out something that stops her cold. "They are alive. I wouldn't—"

"_What? _You destroyed Winterfell!"

A ragged breath comes from the dark. She has stolen the light and can see nothing but a suggestion of space. A space that answers. "I t-took it, I didn't burn it. He caught me, t-told me he'd razed it. The boys escaped." He says more in a rush but Sansa is retreating to the light. A voice so broken cannot belong to anyone not just as ruined.

Whatever her fury, he shocks her. Out of the light's path, she can see him almost clearly. _Gods…_

She saw broken, bloody men after Blackwater, but blood hides the worst of wounds. Theon is on the ground, propped against the dank wall. She used to consider him decently handsome, if grating and uncouth. Now, his cheeks and ribs are bones etched with skin. His_ fingers_…he has only seven of them. His feet rest awkwardly and Sansa suspects he has fewer than ten toes. He has ducked his head, as if the light stings his eyes. Without thinking, she steps into the brightest light to block it.

"Why are you here?" he asks, voice cracked. He knows, but like her he still has a delusion of hope.

"Ramsay. When I returned to Robb, Lord Bolton proposed his son. I was…not supposed to find this room." Like Theon, she can still have a scrap of delusion.

He starts to sob quietly. "Of course you were…You were _always _supposed to find it. He told me he was going to f—_marry_ you but…but I knew Robb wouldn't."

"I agreed to it. I'm still a fool. But Ramsay has gone to kill bandits." She steps closer and sinks to her knees. He cringes away, but there is little else to move. "We can escape." He is already shaking his head.

"He has his father's soldiers, and a few of his boys. They will stop you. And he will come back."

It isn't that Sansa is calmer—she is ready to leap from her skin—but she reacts to those around her. His own shaking horror compels her to be the calmer head. She takes a long breath to steady her voice. "Then help me, what do I do?"

Tears trail down his cheeks but when he opens his eyes they are steady and sad. "Take a hot bath and cut your wrists."

She almost retorts something cruel but bites it back at the last moment. "Theon," she says, trying to sound reasonable. "He can't kill me. Robb rides with his father. My mother has returned to Winterfell."

But Theon blinks hard and his voice breaks in agony. "No, he won't kill you. Did he give you a pair of gloves?" She nods, and his face jerks her back to her morbid thoughts with the Stark skins, and the women's missing flesh. He sucks in a shuddering breath, voice distant. "They were his toys, until his father mentioned you. He hunted them, brought them back here alive, and...cut them. He left for you, leaving them alive in case he needed more. Until yesterday."

Her stomach clenches and her fingers are clammy; she would have retched had she eaten since late-morning. Yesterday. He left her to attend the Dreadfort. Then he found her, kissed her, took her. His thumb had stroked her throat, his skin still warm from murder.

When her father died, Sansa keened until she fainted. When Lord Tyrion informed her of their engagement, she cried until her eyes and throat felt like sand. This time, her eyes are watering, tears trailing, but she stays quiet. Gods, Theon. She does not forgive or understand him, but at that moment what he was matters less than what he is. She scrapes closer. Her foster-brother is as filthy as the floor and seems as scared of her as pitying, but he keeps still when she sits close enough for their legs to brush.

"Where are my brothers?" she asks softly.

His breath rattles. "The Wall. Maybe White Harbor. I thought his soldiers were going to kill me. I didn't doubt my own. The boys were gone, and my men traded me for freedom." He snorts but soon winces. Sansa sees a blue-black bruise on his side, a broken rib. "When I woke here. I thought I was dead."

A key to his hell…a hell where he reigns. Her hands shake but her tears have slowed and her mind is clear.

"Theon, will you help me? Can you walk?"

The crumpled boy is already wriggling away from her, red-rimmed eyes wide with panic. "No, no, he'll take a _hand_. I can't lose a hand. I'm…sorry. He'll know, whatever you tell him. He'll know."

"I did not think you were craven."

But she understands, despite herself. Only once was she set on killing Joffrey and even if it meant her death. The Hound stopped her. Without a wolf, without a dog, she has no fangs. With a blank calm, Sansa closes his cell, leaving it unlocked. The sheet settles back on the dead servant girls.

She leaves without speaking, her feet scuffling up the steps, dragging like iron bars.

Once back from her husband's self-made hell, she writes more letters. The steward is a quiet man, courteous, but Sansa watches as he sends the birds, just in case he tries to read them. Later, looking out a window, she sees Theon is correct. At least two non-guardsmen men still prowl the grounds, and smoke rises from the barracks. She can imagine asking to go for a ride and being told she must have an escort. A mad gallop to Winterfell crosses her mind, but the Bastard of Bolton is a hunter, with hounds and good horses. He would catch her. Remembering Theon, she shudders.

She is numb at heart as she crawls into bed, shivering in a simple shift until she squirms under the covers. Tomorrow she must escape; her mother must know Bran and Rickon are alive.

* * *

When the door explodes open, Sansa jolts awake and fears Ramsay will drag her from her bed and down to the dungeon. He was playing when he pulled her from the bath but he can carry her twice over.

"Sansa!" He had kicked the door open, and now strides in like he won the Battle of the Trident. His face tilts. "Still _sleeping_?"

Sansa's fear for her life cannot defeat the dawn. From the sun in the large window, she guesses it mid-morning. She sketches a smile, forces a bit of youthful sleepiness into her voice, and ignores the hollow ache in her stomach.

"My lord has made the forest safe again?"

He leaps onto the bed, trapping her legs between his own. Ramsay does not return in armor, but looks like he just galloped through a wet wood. "Ten now crown the Dreadfort. My men are tracking down the rest. _I_ missed my pretty wife."

"And I missed my dear husband." Summoning every scrap of tenderness in her, she reaches out and strokes his cheek.

His eyes _gleam_ and she quails. He leans closer, claiming her with a kiss more teeth than tongue. One hand sinks into her hair, the other holds her wrist. He pulls back just enough to breathe. "My pretty, _dutiful_,_ obedient_ wife."

Sansa's heart freezes. He smirks as she pales, eyes widening in mock surprise as his hand squeezes hers, hard enough to grind bones.

"Was there a _battle_ while I was gone? Why else would you have blood under your wrist and nails?"

And she can see it now, in the daylight, in the three fingers that extend past his grip, flushed from the pressure. Blood, wedged under like half-moons. Her skin now against his, she feels the flaking rust of blood she never saw.

The cruel little key, still on its ring, is an arm's length from her.

"Ramsay—" She whines as the hand in her hair tightens.

His voice is low, noble airs turned to mumbling. "You do not wring chickens, you do not dress stags, you don't even saw peoples' legs off like that Volantene slut. You – don't – do – _anything_ that would soak your sleeves in blood. Except go where you promised not to." His mouth curls in grief that would make a mummer proud. "_One _door, Sansa. I gave you my home except for one door."

Sansa knows he tricked her into her own betrayal, to those curious secrets that called to her in his absence. She lost the game as he knew she would. Lost, as her father lost to the executioner.

Courtesy will not protect her. She quells her shaking, at least some of it. "Forgive me, Ramsay. I only missed you."

She forces herself to be a pale, pliant bird that begs for clipped wings. Offering her ravishment to whatever made him throw himself at her in the knife-strewn chamber. She sees him consider, sees him almost fail to resist an open call to her corruption. He lets go, sits back, his eyes lazing like a cat tracking a floundering dove. In the end, his smile is biting.

"Stupid girl, a clever man realizes he can take what he wants, whenever he wants."

"Your king would not—"

His grin and savage eyes stop her cold. He laughs, but there is naught but scorn. "Why in hell would I marry a claim I wouldn't press? I never let a _brother _have what I wanted."

_Domeric._ Lord Bolton's trueborn son, his only heir until he was in enough need to legitimize a bastard. Kinslayer. Ramsay grabs the key ring, unhooking the one he baited her with.

His hand once more slides around her throat and his voice is as docile as that day atop the sepulcher. "Fear not, I won't kill you for your disobedience—I can't fuck a son into a dead girl."

He lashes out and she braces like she is once more kneeling before the Iron Throne. But Ramsay's fingers pass a hair's breadth too short for a slap—until fire streaks across her brow. She cries out, and blood drips into her eyelashes. He cut her with the key. His thumb trails the small gash. Carelessly he licks it off, the sound squelching in her ears.

"Hardly tastes like the soul of the North," he says with a petulant scowl. Ramsay finally slides off her, only to yank her to her feet. "This game is boring." He grabs her jaw, grinning again in his venomous joy. "You offered to accompany me on a hunt. I won't deny my lady wife, but you'd probably break your neck down a ravine. And my girls get _so_ jealous. A small hunt then. If you can get outside the Dreadfort, you win. If I catch you, you lose. If you haven't left this room by sundown, I return and you forfeit." His voice lowers, scarce a whisper. "You do not want to forfeit, for that will be no sport."

He leaves as abruptly as the day they arrived. Sansa stands there an eternity, rubbing her bruised wrist, ice and ache filling her from throat to belly. Perhaps he lurks just outside the door. But she would not stand there wondering. Fear gave her a measure of strength. She has returned to the North and wolves do not cower. Sansa flings open the door, astonished her hands no longer shake.

The hall is empty. Likely he has gone below to while away the time before he has his sport. Her breath is too loud for the corridor. She turns, neck prickling, just as a hand clamps over her mouth faster than she can scream. But she smells no leather, only blood and sweat. A voice hisses in her ear and pulls her back into her chambers.

Wrenching away, she rounds on the corpse that somehow knew his way up here. The shadows hid the weals, the scars, the bruised and swollen joints. They softened the starved jut of his hips above bloodstained, threadbare rags. Theon stands askance, close to wheezing. How long did it take him to get here? She did not lock his cell—possibly she did not lock the forbidden door either.

"What would you have of me?" he asks hoarsely.

Sansa cannot help herself. A decanter sits on a corner table and she pours him a cup of wine. Water would be better but she has none. He still gulps the offered glass like it's the last drink in Dorne. She pours him more.

"You said you wouldn't help me." It is not an accusation.

He cannot meet her eyes so he stares at the cup. "I can die helping you, or when he runs out of things to cut off. You don't _deserve_ this."

_Did I deserve any of it?_ Even now, her fear stands on a precipice. She can lose herself in it, or she can find her balance and turn away.

Pouring herself her own cup, she describes her husband's concocted game.

"He's a liar," Theon breathes, lost and wandering, as if he wants nothing more than to return to the dark.

Were he not hurt she would order him to be her champion. He and Robb were always competing, always more or less equal with swords. Robb was the better rider, Theon better with a bow and throwing knives. Now he looks like he can barely hold a sword or draw back an arrow.

"I chose wrong," she says with a sigh. Not just this. Theon's face shows the same.

She wishes the Hound were here. He would carve Ramsay shoulder to kidney and leave him alive just long enough to know he was hurtling off the battlements. But such thoughts do nothing. She could wish an army here, her father here, it makes no difference.

Sinking to the bed, she tucks her knees to her chest. Her foster-brother shifts from foot to foot, his feet scabbed and horrid. She points her chin at the foot of the bed, to where he limps in unspoken gratitude. Letting Theon anywhere near her bed would have once scandalized her, but that was long ago.

Sansa was used to being a battered toy in the Red Keep. Fists and sword-flats bloodied her skin and shamed her before a hundred onlookers, but here, she is a Stark. She is a wolf, perhaps the most docile and lost wolf there is, but she is no one's meat.

But if she does escape, then she is three-hundred miles from Winterfell without a horse or food. She twines her hair through her fingers.

_A game_, it is a game in which every move is ruled by a destiny as oppressive and twisted as her bastard husband. She will not play, she tells her foster-sib. Her brother will be here after he receives her raven. Her hurts will be avenged. Theon thinks her a fool—she has no idea what Ramsay can do in the span of several days. He will give her a door ringed in fire and leading to hell, and she will leap through because it offers the slightest chance of escape. And yet, she has little recourse.

Theon will not leave her though. If there is an opportunity to kill Bolton's bastard, he will take it. Not that he believes he can; she sees that in his eyes, but she appreciates the sentiment. More so, she appreciates having someone who remembers when they were happy.

With little else to do until sunset, they sup on bread with cheese and remember Winterfell from years ago. Their foolishness and stupid behavior—when she and Jeyne tricked Arya into putting wax in her hair and earned her mother's wrath. Sansa and Theon were never close, but he once taught her how to make a wreath of flowers for her hair, and she taught him songs to flatter the girls he liked. She knows he hurts, that his mind is a punctured, bloody thing lost in its own regrets, but he tries to be kind. He knows her fear, even if she stays mostly calm.

By late-afternoon, Sansa has almost fallen asleep in his lap as he runs his fingers through her hair. The soothing touch has always made her eyes heavy. Fighting back her drowsiness, she sits up, her sib flinching from the sudden movement. She goes to the window, the glass cool under her palm. The road winds west, a cinnamon trail in the reddening light. Suddenly she squints.

"Theon—" He shuffles beside her, resting against the frame. "Are those riders?"

He leans closer, arm above his brow. She tries not to look at the jagged pink bolt that snakes along his ribs. "Aye…"

She knows he sees it too. At least twenty riders, cantering down the road. Their colors are not Bolton but Stark. Almost as if they see her, the banners lower out of sight, and the riders are just another band racing through the wild. _Hiding their colors. _Her wounded heart pounds.

"It's Robb!" A small, desperate laugh bubbles in disbelief. "He's come to rescue me. When will he get here?"

Theon considers the distance. Considers not telling her. "Not before sunset."

Hope is treacherous. She once thought to marry Ser Loras, and the Lannisters showed her how scathing hope can be. But she lets herself be a traitor, albeit a cautious one.

"Where would Ramsay be?"

He answers without a thought, looking at the sinking sun like it is the last he will see. "Where he can hurt you the most. Outside the Dreadfort's door."

Sansa has little knowledge of warfare or sieges, but it does not take study to know twenty riders cannot take a castle. If the gates close, Robb will be Ramsay's archery practice. And then Ramsay will be married to the Lady of Winterfell. The Queen of Winterfell. If it is Robb, she realizes. He would be coming from the Riverlands. Robb is her older brother, of course he comes to her rescue. When she looks at Theon he seems to have come to the same bloody conclusion.

She opens her trunk. Searching its sparse contents, she settles on a dove gray dress, accented in white. A silly thing, to dress for one's possible death, but Sansa wants her family's colors. The sleeves have no draping, and the skirts were never lengthened when she grew. They will not trip her.

Coaxing her fear into a dark corner, she sketches a plan with her sib. A flimsy, holey plan, but she is out of time. Breathing deep, she opens the door.


	4. The Draw

**The Chamber Below the Dreadfort**

**Chapter Four:** The Draw

* * *

Thank the old gods and the new, the door remains unlocked. The Dreadfort stays quiet but she can feel and hear people below, Ramsay's gallery of boon companions. Sansa ducks through the mahogany doors, into the room venerating steel and blood.

"Take anything," she says. Swords never held the same regard from her as Arya, but she decides broken teeth are better than none.

Theon limps, never fully on-kilter. His withering silence when she mentioned northmen who lost half their toes to frostbite and still move fine made her realize his injuries went far beyond fingers and toes. She does not ask more, not when she is possibly sending him to his death.

"I used to be good at throwing these." Theon eyes the pretty red-etched dagger still embedded in the doorframe.

"Are you still?" She does not ask how many fingers it takes to throw a dagger.

"Possibly." He wrenches it out and inspects the rest of the room.

Knowing little of knives except that she does not want a skinning one and cannot use a throwing one, she settles on a dagger a little longer than her hand, its hilt banded in blue and red inlay. There are no sheathes but she still has a free hand.

Theon now glances at the table, puzzled. Realizing what he must see, her cheeks flush as red as the maidenblood still smeared across the wood. His eyes flick to hers and he guesses the rest. At least they are unlikely to be seen by a servant.

Sometimes he leans on things, usually walls. As they leave the jeweled armory, he leans against her, arm over her shoulders, just for a moment. Sansa wonders if it is his way of an embrace that would not end in her shoving him. She should hate him, but now is not the time.

The first floor has more noise, some from men, most from the murmuring river. Theon had warned her sound carries differently on the ground floor, rattled and bounced by the high stone ceilings. At last she sees the front doors, blazing with the sundown and open to the world. Her foster-brother trails behind so he can watch her. So far they have seen no one, not even a chambermaid. Guards rarely interfere with his sport. If Ramsay indeed waits outside.

Sansa looks at her hands and sees them shaking. She tries to calm herself; Theon warned her if she panics she is done for. When she asked if he was afraid, he shrugged. _Liar_, she thinks. When she referred to her husband as the Bastard, his eyes screwed shut, his neck tensed, and he whispered "Don't call him—" before he could bite his tongue. But she does not think him craven. She reminded him of the time he stopped a charging boar, an arrow through its neck and its dying squeal ending two paces from his feet. That seemed to make him sadder than anything. Six months in the Dreadfort and he barely lives. What would a year do to him?

The sudden footsteps turn her spine to water. A soft, unhurried tread. Theon was wrong—the Bastard of Bolton tricked them and he's behind her. Looking to the open door, freedom, her legs tremble like a horse before it bolts.

"Sansa," Theon whispers as loud as he dares. He sees her shifting, looking to the light. "That's not him; it's farther than it sounds—"

She hears a clatter—a gauntleted hand curling, rattling, _about to_—Sansa does not care who it is, she launches herself through the door. Someone shuffles behind her, grabbing for her arm, but she is faster. Low and bloody, the sun rushes to embrace her.

The hand clamps down on the back of her neck and she screeches in pain. Her voice cuts off when he smashes his mouth against hers. Ramsay bites, catches her lip in his teeth. She stabs at his neck while he is distracted, aim awkward but too close to miss.

Catching her hand, he slams her into the stone wall, the heel of his palm crushing her wrist until the dagger falls from half-numb fingers. His hands move to her collarbone. She finally sees that Ramsay stands just past the doorway, pinning her to the angled stone that slopes away from the door. _I am a fool to the last…_

He smiles, but she knows his only mirth comes from her pain. "You kept me waiting, and now I'm hungry." When she stays mute he digs his thumbs into some groove and she's crying and thrashing as her shoulders blaze in agony. "_You lose_—"

His hunter's sense preserves him. Sansa sees the metal flash a half-moment after he has already wrenched around, just as the dagger tears into his shoulder instead of his chest. It glances off, but blood wells from the cut as he realizes who threw it. Ramsay grabs her by the throat and drags her with him, into the courtyard, a shield against Theon. Her head swims; he squeezes something that chokes more than just breath. But somewhere, she swears she hears galloping horses. That is the plan, pitiful as it is. Distract him, kill him, give the riders time to arrive without an order to close the gates. He cannot kill her if he wants an heir.

She can barely see the shadowed form of Theon in the doorway, and she has been outside for less time than Ramsay. From the way he keeps her in front of him, eyes fighting the sunlight, he cannot find his prisoner. Blinking, sinking, she elbows uselessly against his ribs, her arms leaden. The hand leaves her throat and air rushes back in strangled coughs—along with pain as a blade slides against her cheek and his other arm snakes around her waist.

"Throw something again, Lord Theon!" he snarls. "She won't need her eyes for whelping."

_How many knives did Theon take? One, two?_ He would not last a moment if he drew a sword.

The blade bites her skin and Ramsay's arm keeps her pinned to his chest. But she sees a chance, if she is brave or stupid enough. He needs her alive. Butchered, broken, but intact enough to bear children. They are close enough in height he has shoved her down to see clearly, bending her knees, just a little. Taking a breath for courage, Sansa tries not to think.

She pulls on his arm and straightens. Ramsay is staring at Theon, eyes blazing in wary malice. Wondering if a broken dog has remembered it still can bite. A jerk of her chin and the blade burns, but it finally slides under her jaw and kisses her throat.

"You stupid slut!" He realizes too late.

The steel is a gasp away from slicing open her jugular. By his own admission he cannot end her, not if he wants to stare out over Winterfell's battlements, warm in his murder-won mantle. The Dreadfort lacks a maester and Ramsay is made for killing, not healing. If he does not want her bleeding to death in his arms, he must remove the blade, and carefully, for her chin hooks above his knuckles. Every moment he spares the riders gain.

Like a coming tide, the hoofbeats crash in her ears, closer every moment. The gate is still open; he expects his men, toting the heads of the bandits foolish enough to cross Bolton lands. But still too far. Nevertheless, he hears them.

Ramsay eases back the dagger, just far enough he can hiss into her ear. "Their blood is up, and I've run low on serving-girls."

He yanks the blade away, at the same time he swings around, his other hand unfastening. The blow hammers into her back and she falls, cuts her hands and knees on stone. Her cheek burns as tears fill the cut, as fingers dig into her hair. He has stepped to the side of the courtyard to lure Theon into the open. Staggering to find her feet, she yelps as his knee cracks against her hip bone.

"Stay down," he growls. Then he hisses and jerks back, sputtering in furious laughter, yanking out the slender knife embedded in his arm. She knows Ramsay smiles, and knows Theon fears that smile about all else. "When I cut out her eyes, I'll starve you until you eat them!"

He wrenches her head back until she is blinking and tearing from the reddened sun. Only his wariness of more blades keeps him from blinding her that instant. But if his father has deigned to teach him anything, it is the zealous necessity of carrying out a threat. Pain has quelled most of Sansa's scrabbling thoughts, but as she sees that blade sink closer to her eyes, she chokes on the dread of her final sundown. Hooves and blood drum in her ears.

They erupt through the open gate. Twenty horses, banners low, bows and swords bared. Sansa sees them from one eye, blinking through the blood crusting her eyelashes. Ramsay stiffens beside her—he realizes they are Starks the same moment she realizes their leader is her mother.

Lady Catelyn looks part wildling, part warmaiden, her fiery hair whipping in the wind as she glares at the bastard who has defiled family, duty, and honor. And she does not stop. She snaps a horsewhip and the palfrey bounds across the courtyard. Ramsay flinches first and ducks right, just as Catelyn saws her reins left.

Hooves and horseflesh collide with Bolton's bastard, whose snarling curse cuts off when he slams into the stone. Catelyn wheels the horse between Ramsay and her daughter. He still holds his knife but it looks tiny against her mother's slate-colored horse. Bleeding from a torn cheek, Ramsay lurches upright, stunned for the first time Sansa has ever seen. As if he dreamed about his brother returning from the dead, then one day saw him riding through the gates, smiling and asking if he wanted to hunt foxes. Then he recognizes Lady Catelyn.

"Wretched cunt, _my father will_—" The whip cracks across his face and he spits blood.

Catelyn's voice is colder than the Weeping Water. "Your father will beget a true son to replace the one you murdered, kinslayer."

She makes a gesture with the whip and Sansa hears the twang of bowstrings. Two arrows catch him in the chest, drag him to his knees, and bleed him dry and gurgling on the cold stones of the Dreadfort. Ramsay would want to curse them with his final breath, but he has none left.

Her mother's men encircle her and Sansa finally hears the unsheathing of Bolton blades. Her heart freezes. Even with some gone bandit hunting, they outnumber twenty men.

Catelyn swings from the saddle and pulls her daughter to her feet. Sansa collapses against her, aghast her bloody face stains her mother's gown, just as Catelyn tilts her face and kisses her cheeks, blood-spattered or not. They are of equal height, but Sansa still buries her face in her mother's neck.

Her mother whispers softly in her ear. "You're safe, Sansa. I promise."

Throat too tight to speak, Sansa chokes out the word soldiers. Stroking her hair, Catelyn is too proud to cry, but Sansa feels her heart hammering in her chest.

"They are distracted by Lady Brienne."

She steps back and turns to the men now guarding the Dreadfort, who have finally realized their master is not playing a game. "Leal servants of House Bolton, I am Lady Catelyn Stark, mother of the king. We have no quarrel. Sheathe your swords and we will leave."

Some look like they want to cut her to pieces—cruelty attracts cruelty, and some men could find every lust satisfied serving under Ramsay Bolton. But at least half do not want to risk an arrow to the throat. The smartest have also noticed no one is coming from the barracks.

Catelyn takes Sansa's face, more firmly this time. "I found one of Lady Hornwood's servants. Among the builders I found several who survived the sacking. They claim Ramsay burned Winterfell and captured Theon. Does the turncloak live?"

Sansa sees no one but wary guards in the Dreadfort's doorway. Please Theon, don't come out. She cannot forgive his sins, but neither can she watch his execution, and while her mother's love is boundless, her mercy is not. She shakes her head. "Ramsay cut him to pieces."

"He deserved death. I pity him for the one who granted it."

But Sansa does not think her pity runs deep. She needs to tell her mother that her sons live without it seeming like a jape of the Bastard's. If they indeed still live. It gives her a shudder. Theon might have killed them when he drove them into the wild, even if not by his hand. She should hate him.

She will not stay long enough to take her horse, lest the one man who would die for Ramsay Bolton be waiting in the stables. As she rides behind her mother, face sticky with blood, Catelyn tells of how she came here with the small force at Winterfell. Half diverted to distract the bulk of Bolton's men, approaching from the other side of the Weeping Water. They had already set out at a mad pace before she and her husband arrived at the Dreadfort. Lady Catelyn does not ask if her maidenhead remains intact; likely she assumes he ripped it away the night they left Winterfell. Sansa does not say she should have listened to her mother, but only out of pride and self-evidence.

In her short time away, Winterfell looks brighter. Yet as she passes under the new gate, she thinks it is only because she knows a crueler North.

* * *

"Are you certain you wish to stay? Lady Brienne will remain here with you." Her mother's eyes are kind, though always concerned. She sets down her mug of spicy-sweet tea.

Sansa picks at an hardboiled egg, nodding. "I am so tired of _travelling_. If I stay here, I can oversee the builders, and be here when they find Bran and Rickon."

Slowly her daughter has revealed the truth of King's Landing, and her marriage to the monster who made her a widow at fourteen. Catelyn prayed to the Seven when Sansa revealed her sons' survival, relating it as a slip of the Bastard's tongue when he mocked her. As she listens to her tale of the Dreadfort only to diminish her daughter's nightmares, she does not press for more than Sansa offers. Her ravens should have reached White Harbor and the Wall by now.

Lord Bolton has said nothing about his deranged son. Yet Sansa worries. She knows her mother did the wrong thing, but also the only thing she could do. By law, Ramsay should have been arrested and tried. And yet if he were alive, his men would have fight for him. Lady Catelyn always regarded him as a bastard, not a legitimized heir, and Sansa thinks this colored her choice. She hopes it does not color what her mother foresees as a consequence. Ramsay was Lord Bolton's son, his legacy, whatever his sins.

"Give Uncle Edmure my warmest congratulations. And Robb and Talisa." Her uncle no longer dreads his wedding to Roslin Frey, having found someone who spoke of her tiny waist and doe eyes. Her brother's queen is also now with child.

Robb will understand why she stays in the North. The Ironborn cling to Moat Cailin and Deepwood Motte, but neither can take Winterfell, not with the small contingent her brother sent with Catelyn. Their numbers have grown as well. Roose Bolton would not spare the soldiers who let his son's murderers walk away. The more honest among them soon accompanied the Starks to Winterfell. The crueler ones grabbed what they could from the Dreadfort and disappeared into the hills. There were disagreements, raped servants, and bloodshed, but Sansa knows naught more than rumor.

They say their goodbyes on a cold, damp morning two days later. Lady Catelyn has little desire to see Edmure's long-delayed wedding to the long-peevish Freys, but it would look poor otherwise. Sansa is sad when she leaves, her mother's slate-gray horse disappearing like a ghost into the morning mist. Somehow, it feels like a true goodbye.

It stays with her for days after, a melancholy she supposes she should be grateful for, given her horrors at the Dreadfort. The cut on her cheek will heal without scarring; Ramsay's knife was sharp and honed, an artist's tool for vicious work. The key's dull gash will not. It remains a small, embarrassing red line, like a weal of blood that will never fall.

"My lady, a rider approaches from the east, alone." Brienne stands in her doorway, dignified in her quiet way.

Sansa lies on her bed, her hair down, reading a book of wistful stories. She does not need to stand on the battlements. Instead she pulls back her draperies and looks through her window. It is not so much by sight but by feel that she knows who it must be. A single figure on a familiar red roan palfrey—her palfrey—rides toward the gate, covered head to foot in a fine cloak with fox fur on the shoulders.

She _should_ hate him, but she chooses not to. Others can attribute it to another of her poor choices, but they are hers. Lady Catelyn will not be back for some time, and Brienne will heed Sansa's wishes.

"I know him. I will be down in a moment."

Brienne, who guards Sansa like a mother bear, stays by the door to escort her.

Sansa looks out, past her window and battlements. The late-afternoon sun reddens the world around the approaching rider, red like blood and betrayal. But not hers.


End file.
